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The show had a bigger audience than hit network shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” “American Idol,” “The Voice” and “Modern Family” during its third season despite the disadvantage cable channels have had in the past compared to their network counterparts.

Even its companion talk show, The Talking Dead, drew in huge numbers for its Season 3 mid-season premiere: 2.8 million viewers ages 18 to 49 on top of the 7.7 million for that demographic that tuned in for the corresponding episode of The Walking Dead.

As the New York Time reports, the Talking Dead episode alone trumped NBC “not just for the night, but for all of February.”

Technology is playing a role in the show’s success.

Alexia Quadrani, a media analyst at JPMorgan, gives Netflix at least some of the credit.

“AMC sold the show to Netflix early, so when people started talking about it, it was there for the watching,” she notes.

Networks have been more reticent to place shows on Netflix for instant viewing, sticking to services like Hulu and even then not always doing a terrific job at making new (or older) programming available online.

Since AMC can push the envelope further, they can lean on better, more troubling special effects, making all those shuffling biters all the more realistic—and gory.

AMC’s willingness to release its content onto video streaming services like Amazon Prime means viewers have a cheap and convenient way to access that content without resorting to piracy.

Compare this to HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones which is the number-one pirated show in the world. While HBO has been pretty sanguine about this phenomenon, it doesn’t change the fact that AMC has done a better job at making their hit series more readily available to audiences quickly growing accustomed to online entertainment.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” Lombardo said. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

Indeed, Lombardo expressed concern that pirates of the show were getting an inferior product. “One of my worries is about the copies [downloaders are] seeing,” Lombardo said. “The production values of this show are so incredible. So I’m hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts that the show is holding up.”

Certainly both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones have both enjoyed another marker of success: viral, fan-driven hype.

Viral zombie plague, viral success.

Perhaps the greatest sign of success is a good parody. Nothing says money like a little satire.

Saturday Night Live tackled the zombie drama recentl, playing off some of the show’s issues with race.

But nothing quite beats a good Bad Lip Reading, whether it’s of The Hunger Games—I very nearly died laughing during that one—or the NFL.

But their newest parody (I’m actually not sure if this qualifies as parody, come to think of it) may beat them all, if only for the brilliant musical segment at the end between The Governor and an annoyed Rick.

The virality of The Walking Dead can be attributed to both its adult-oriented zombie content, the power of the internet and new ways of distributing television online, and the way the show focuses on its characters.

There’s no way a zombie show that was all zombie and no character would draw in this sort of audience.

“People tune in for the characters,” show producer David Alpert told Business Insider. “They are emotionally invested in these people, the dilemmas, and moral choices. I think if we did this today as just a straight zombie action show I don’t think anybody would watch.Or, there would be a very small audience; just the hardcore fans. And, that’s not what we do.”

As Forbes writer Dorothy Pomerantz notes, “The Walking Dead has never been shy about killing off lead characters.” And it does so, typically, in as brutal a fashion as possible. This generates buzz and that buzz spreads like wildfire on social media sites and forums.

A quality cast of characters working their way through a long narrative arc that’s often deadly regardless of your main character status goes a long ways toward feeding into the concept of internet-driven hype and social media virality. Both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones have deadly, character driven stories that keep people talking online each week.

AMC goes to great lengths to make sure each episode is as widely discussed on social media as possible, with episode-specific Twitter hashtags mentioned on commercial breaks and during The Talking Dead.

Likewise, one could view HBO’s attitude toward piracy as an example of the company embracing a form of viral marketing. The more viewers—even illegal viewers—the more hype the show will generate online, and hopefully the more subscribers HBO snares.

Can network television keep up?

Either way, the success of shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones is changing the equation for big networks and smaller cable channels alike. As Forbes’ Jeff Bercovi reported recently, some of the big networks are looking at the future of their broadcast status with much less certainty than before.

Here again, the culprit is technology. Specifically Aereo, which can grab free over-the-air broadcasts and stream them to your computer, and the Dish Network’s ad-skipping Hopper.

The networks have been attempting to legally challenge both these technologies, but these efforts have so far been fruitless and at least two of the four big network broadcasters are considering moving to cable as a last resort, according to statements from Garth Ancier, a former top-level executive at NBC, Fox and WB according to Reuters.

Once again, disruptive technology helps some and hinders others, upsetting a delicate balance and forcing entrenched players to rethink their strategy.

Still, no matter how much the internet and technology have driven the success of The Walking Dead and how other technology has begun to threaten network competition, it’s the quality writing, cinematography, special effects, and acting that have made this and other shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones such a huge success. Nothing on network television is as ambitious.

Perhaps this is the flexibility afforded to a cable television program that can afford to take risks that the big network stations shy away from.

In fact, NBC at one point had the rights to The Walking Dead and its original showrunner Frank Darabont, according to former NBC programmer Kevin Reilly.

‘The Walking Dead’ is an extraordinary thing,” said Reilly. “I bought the script at NBC from Frank Darabont. I developed it. I loved it.” But NBC backed out.

“I thought it was good, but it was an early draft,” Reilly said. “And then, when I left and I heard it went over to AMC, there was just a lot of serendipity involved.”

Serendipity indeed, for viewers and AMC alike.

Whatever the case, as The Walking Dead rises, as HBO struggles with its distribution model, and as the big networks prepare for disaster, changes are coming to the television landscape. What these changes spell for the future of television remains a mystery, but I remain cautiously optimistic that we’re headed in a consumer-friendly direction.

We just need to be prepared for some bumps along the way. When it comes to “disruptive technology” there’s always an element of surprise and uncertainty.

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I can’t agree that The Walking Dead strongly focuses on its characters. That’s not what the show does well. It’s good at killing a lot of zombies. That doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, but that’s ok. I do like character-driven dramas, and I think the show largely fails at this. There wasn’t a single character along the lines of say, Jesse in Breaking Bad or Arya in Game of Thrones, that I actually cared about. I suppose Daryl was the closest, but it isn’t like I would be devastated if he died. In fact, while I was watching, I was mostly just rooting for the deaths of characters I disliked.

I’m not really sure “technology” is the primary reason The Walking Dead has become a hit, though accessibility certainly helps (it was a pretty big hit right away, though it’s doubled its ratings since). No, I think the major reasons are twofold. First and foremost, even though it doesn’t do much for me, I think the basic “zombies get killed every week” premise appeals to a lot of people. I don’t really care for it, but to each his own.

Second, so many people watch the show that one can feel out of the loop if he or she isn’t also watching it. I suffered through two-and-a-half seasons of the show mostly because of this. I felt like I had to watch it to have an intelligent conversation about television. But then I realized that I really dislike the show, and I stopped. And I felt liberated. I can’t be the only one who was/is watching the show out of social obligation more than anything else.

Re: characters. The Walking Dead is no Breaking Bad, but it really does focus on the characters, kind of in the same way Lost did. Not enough, but still enough to keep me interested and caring about the characters. Compared to the vast majority of shows out there, it does a pretty good job of it too.

Technology isn’t the *primary* reason the show is successful. That’s just a hook.

It is the characters, but it isn’t the show. It’s the comic, which is focused much more heavily on the characters and, in my opinion as a reader since the first issue, does a much better job of it than the show does. Same goes for Game of Thrones. Both of which I’d actually consider to be pretty bad adaptations of rather excellent works. The thing is, they do rub off a bit and that seems to be coming through enough to keep people interested. I actually find it rather odd that this article completely ignores that both are adaptations.

At the same time it’s not just the characters. A show with nothing but character interaction is a soap opera and it’s usually quite dull and uninteresting. Look at Season 2 which was pretty heavily maligned for very little going on (and quite correctly too, it was maybe three issues from the comic with a bunch of added-on claptrap about a missing child in a bid for forced drama). Story is what drives a show, characters are only relevant as they relate to the story. But without either of them it falls flat.

And, no, the thing that made Lost interesting was the central mythos of the show. The characters were just dull window dressing to parade around and fail to talk to each other about what was happening to them. Something that the writers chose to ignore to their peril when they created a highly divisive finale.

Wait, how exactly is technology setting The Walking Dead apart from other TV shows. Hashtags? This is standard. Making previous seasons available on Netflix? Again, this is rather standard. If anything AMC is more restrictive with the content than others are, and the show’s social media and online video channels are underdeveloped.

I go back and forth on The Walking Dead. The first episode of season 1 was a lot of fun, and the last half of season 2 was fun as well. There are certain things I really dislike about the show, but it’s difficult to put my finger on exactly what it is.

It kind of saddens me that the British show “Survivors”, a post-apocalyptic show that’s based primarily on character-driven story managed to do a better job overall in dragging me into the story than the wonderfully produced, better acted, and overall more beautiful show The Walking Dead. Not only is The Walking Dead more realistic in terms of the horrible despair these people are going through, it’s better in just making the characters look like they’re going through absolute hell without all of the benefits society has built up over the past several hundred years. But then, Survivors succeeds at everything The Walking Dead fails at — namely getting us involved in the characters, and that’s why it’s a better show. Too bad it was canceled due to poor ratings. If only the writers for that show could go over to AMC…